How-To Geek

The debate between BMW’s top compact performance cars has never been more intense, and many buyers automatically assume the pricier, track-focused option is the obvious choice. But in 2025, that assumption doesn’t hold up. The more attainable alternative delivers nearly the same straight-line speed, everyday comfort, and modern tech, making it a far more realistic and well-rounded option for most drivers.

I love PC building. Really, I do, and I have for 20 years. But why do we, PC owners, just have to go from one market disaster to the next?

Moving files from one device to another should be a super-easy task. But unless all of your devices come from a single company like Apple or Samsung, it can actually be very difficult to send files between a phone, computer, laptop, or tablet. So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that FTP, a 53-year-old protocol, is still one of the fastst and easiest solutions for this problem.

Scrolling through Netflix's vast anime titles can feel like a daunting task, especially if you're like me and not knee-deep in the genre. The streaming service makes it easy to delve into classic and newer episodic series and movies, and you're sure to find something you like.

Google just announced that it has raised the rate limits for its Antigravity development platform. However, this benefit is primarily reserved for users who pay for Google AI Pro or Ultra subscriptions. Free users still have to do the workarounds for the incredibly low limits.

Not all documentaries are grisly true-crime investigations. And as we head into the holiday season, it's nice to see that Prime Video's library of docs includes a nice selection of fascinating and uplifting titles that will redeem your faith in humanity.

I usually defend Excel come hell or high water. However, when it comes to regular expressions (regexes), even I admit that open-source LibreOffice Calc is superior: it treats them as native search rules, simplifying conditional tasks to a single, clean formula.

Are you trying to figure out if you need an RTX 5070, 5080, or 5090? Let me help you decide—don’t let VRAM be a factor in your decision-making process. You really don’t need more than 16GB of VRAM for most use cases, especially gaming.

Demogorgons are cool and all, but sometimes the best stories on Netflix aren't the scripted ones. I love delving into a good documentary because they offer glimpses down the rabbit hole of odd and fascinating topic you never knew existed, as well as unprecedented access behind the scenes of some of the world's highest profile people and their lives.

Ever recorded a college lecture and found the audio crystal clear, only to have your concert footage from that very day come out sounding like trash? This happened to me, and after some digging, I found the specific setting to blame—and why you shouldn't actually deactivate it completely.

Calibre just dropped version 8.16.1, and it brings a new feature that lets you ask an AI what book you should read next. This latest update builds on the AI capabilities the Calibre team has been adding over the past few months, which follows the trend of adding AI whenever possible.

Homebrew (or “Brew”) began as a tool to ease installation on macOS, where Apple likes to lock everything down to its App Store. But does it have a place on Linux too, where package managers are commonplace, and the user has more control?

Stop me if this sounds familiar—Google Messages is changing how you pick, send, and view media like pictures and videos inside the app. After running a test and overhauling the entire UI this summer, then rolling back those changes, it now appears that Google is yet again revamping media controls for its text and RCS platform.

Bluetooth is a well-worn technology that you might be tempted to write off in your smart home, especially if your server doesn’t already have Bluetooth capabilities. I wasn’t going to bother, but then I saw an opportunity to pick up a cheap adapter and gave it a shot.

If you're anything like me, you've already hastily consumed the first four episodes of Stranger Things 5. Don't sit there twiddling your thumbs, though. Netflix has plenty more shows to keep you entertained.

As we march toward one of the last weekends of the year, it’s time again to take a look at some homelab projects you should tackle. This weekend, I think it’s time you get your network in order. From setting up VLANs and configuring static IPs to having a VPN available to access your network when out of the house, here’s three homelab projects to tackle this weekend.

You need a plan for when disaster strikes, and I don’t just mean being prepared for a hurricane or wildfire. What do you do to stay connected and preserve your data when your phone is shattered or, worse, lost for good?

As Microsoft continues giving everyone reasons to drop Windows in favor of a more reliable and open platform, there's no better time to explore what Linux has to offer. Here are a few good apps worth your time if you've got a Linux computer to play with this weekend.

The weekend is so close I can almost smell it—and that means it’s time for another roundup of Raspberry Pi projects to try out over the next few days. This weekend, I’m focusing on building out self-hosted media servers and controllers to help simplify audio listening and controlling.

I spend most of my time in Windows, so I’m used to thinking about malware as a fact of life. You stay patched, you avoid sketchy downloads, and you accept that a bad attachment or sloppy update can ruin your day. macOS has always felt different to me. I only use it when work requires it or when I’m in my home studio recording, and in all the years I’ve owned a Mac, it has stayed blissfully untouched by anything resembling a virus.